The City of Sin, and the Valley of Death

Awaking refreshed and ready to hit the road we started making our way to Las Vegas finally. We stopped at the Hoover Dam, which some how my fear of heights overcame. It was huge, how they built it so fast is amazing. It may not look to impressive at first but think about man actually building this structure. It's over 4 football fields thick! The monument on the north end was pretty cool as well. It was a chart of the space and star locations. There was some audio commentary on the speakers explaining it but i didn't catch much of it. Something about aliens finding it and junk.

We finally hit Vegas, which by the way has the worst traffic I have ever seen and experienced in my life. We ended up parking in the some lot next to the Rio. The city was massive, we couldn't even cover it all. We hit up Ceaser's Palace, and The Belogio(sp?). I played some cheap slots and digital black jack and won a couple bucks.

The city had a lot to offer, plenty to look at but there was also a filth to it. When you leave the classy casinos and spill out into the strip, you run into things. Every 30ft they had what looked like newspaper holders ( you know the kind you slip change into for the paper) but they ended up just free nude mags. It didn't stop there though, along with those, every 30ft or so there were people handing our cards, and pamphlets for strip clubs and hookers. The vulgarity and the fact they handed them out to everyone blew my mind. It made me sick, these people pushing this industry so far.

After about 2 hours in Vegas, none of us wanted to really stay till night fall. We headed north again looking to find a place near Yosemite National Park, so we could get in early the next day. This took us into Death Valley, a place properly named. Other then a couple building that resembled an old spanish monastery, the place was desolate. We were running low on gas and daylight at this point. The visitors center look abandoned for a while and had broken glass all over. We found a camp ground but it didn't all that great. We had to decide whether to continue on north of the park and out that end, or the way we came. We ran into another group that came from the north warning us of rocky roads, and a long drive. That was enough to hear so we heading back out the way we came.

We headed north out of the park again trying to find a town to stay in. The first looked like it was stuck in the 1800's and was nearly empty. Then we stumbled upon a real town. After checking all the hotels because they had no camping available, we ended up at the Clown Hotel. It's a little creepy on the outside, but the rooms are fine and that is where i sit now. Thus the update is finally complete.

We head to Yosemite tomorrow, I pray the bears don't rip the van apart.

Chuck Ragan- For Broken Ears.